Posted on 03/08/2002 1:24:33 PM PST by sarcasm
Friday, March 08, 2002 - WASHINGTON - Rep. Tom Tancredo takes credit for thwarting the Bush administration's last effort to offer partial amnesty to thousands of illegal residents, but Thursday the outspoken immigration foe said he may have been outmaneuvered by the White House.
President Bush has struck a deal with the House leadership to place legislation that offers an extension of amnesty on its consent calendar before Bush heads to Mexico for a state visit next week, the Colorado Republican said. That action should ensure quick House passage of legislation that Bush has repeatedly sought from Congress. It would allow an undocumented person to receive legal standing, such as a valid green card, by filing a declaration with the Immigration and Naturalization Service. It presumably also would require the person to have been in the United States by a certain date and have filed a declaration with the INS from an appropriate sponsor, such as a relative or employer, and pay a $1,000 penalty. "The terms are still up in the air," said Dan Stein, executive director of the Federation for American Immigration, a group that has been allied with Tancredo. "We've heard to the effect that the president wants something to bring down to Mexico." The initial Bush proposal, designed exclusively for Mexicans, once was high on the president's legislative wish list, but it was delayed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. However, as the president noted Wednesday in a speech to the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, he now is pushing for the extension of the amnesty program known by the section of immigration law that covers it, Section 245I. The president hailed it as a way to reunite family, separated by the border. "If you believe in family values, if you understand the worth of family and the importance of family, let's get 245I out of the United States Congress and give me a chance to sign it," Bush told the chamber members. Tancredo, the head of a congressional caucus on immigration issues and proponent of halting virtually all immigration, said he had blocked a previous attempt by Bush to push an extension of the amnesty program through the House. But this time, he said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., had agreed to place the issue on the suspension, or consent, calendar, making it difficult to defeat the proposal. The Senate might be more favorable to the bill than the House, expanding the numbers of individuals who can apply, Tancredo said.
I feel so betrayed by the President that I cannot see straight. I cannot believe this. I froze my feet off many nights on his behalf during the election fiasco. He has lost my support forever.
it's the sad truth, isn't it?
i feel disappointed and defeated. :(
Bush is wrong, wrong, wrong on granting amnesty and eventual permanent residency status to millions of illegal Mexican aliens. He undermines the security of our country more than any muslim terrorist ever could.
Immigration is the single most important issue of the 21st century and somewhat akin to the civil rights struggle of the 20th century. If we lose this struggle we may as well kiss our republic good bye.
"Compassionate conservatism" my foot! It's a matter of survival.
Then you have no right to complain
Tancredo actually used that word tonight and O'Reilly agreed, but they were talking about the people who - silly them! - actually went to the effort of complying with our laws to come here. Well, now they know. Just show up. Lay low. Eventually you'll get in.
I always thought Bush was a lightweight with a good speechwriter. Unrehearsed, he was always tentative and vague, prone to gaffes. I thought he would exercise some caution and consult the intelligent guys around him before taking a big risk.
But I think Jr. is impressed with himself now and is winging it on his own.
I mean - where are the big risks to push 2nd amendment rights, chisel away at Roe v. Wade (aside from in Bangladesh, which is all the overseas ban does), emphasize property rights? Why weren't the big risks taken there? That would only entail angering Daschle et al. But no. He goes after US. So what's he done? Fought a war? Hell, he couldn't even bring himself to declare war.
The guy's no politician. If his name had been Steve Smith he'd be selling cars on South Congress st. in Austin.
If these two are indicative, I may have to take back what I said about Rush. I don't trust Rush, but if he does discuss this vote on his show, and is negative about it and does not let Bush off the hook for it, I will have to conclude that one of the following is true: 1) Rush is a closet Open Borderer but wants to head off dissent by appearing to be opposed to illegal immigration; 2) Rush is not an Open Borderer but kept quiet until now hoping for the best from Bush; 3) Rush was an Open Borderer but has finally seen the light.
Conversely, if Rush does refuse to discuss this amnesty, or if he excuses Bush, or otherwise ignores or disregards the implications of this vote, then we will be able to draw a definitive conclusion about where Rush's loyalties lie.
LOL. Isn't that the truth.
BTW, I can't remember exactly when I first saw it but it was during a speech a few months ago before this Amnesty business started up and as I watched him make this speech I got a chilling feeling about him. It wasn't what he said so much as it was the realization that I was looking at someone whose entire personality seemed to have changed. Now I know 9/11 was a defining moment for him but the sense I got was that he could quite ruthless and inflexible which was something I didn’t see in him before that time. Subsequent events have beared out this impression.
You lose, pay up.
Something to feel a little better about.
From Roy Beck, numbersusa.com.
++++++++++++
I know that it is sad to think that 6 months after the attacks on America, the U.S. House of Representatives has thrown all caution to the wind and voted to make the nation somewhat less secure through the Section 245i amnesty for illegal aliens. And I know it is sad to think that with all the traffic, school, etc. congestion and damage to the environment from overpopulation, the House would vote to increase population growth still more by enticing hundreds of thousands of additional illegal aliens to move here.
But .........
The incredibly good showing for our side tonight on the House floor may have great implications for slowing the amnesty freight trains that run out of the Republican White House and the Democratic congressional leadership offices. The reason is that the House GOP leadership may refuse to open up the track for those trains through the House in the near future.
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Here is what our Capitol Hill staff already are hearing from inside GOP leadership circles in the last half-hour: ============================================================
"You guys at NumbersUSA have just scored a tremendous victory. ... The closeness of the vote has not gone unnoticed by the leaders."
"This close vote probably just signed the death knell for any future amnesties."
"You should have your citizen network immediately thank all the Members who voted against their party leadership, and crucify all the ones who voted for this amnesty."
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One vote short of victory
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Because Pres. Bush was in such a hurry to get this passed as a gift to Mexican Pres. Fox in his trip down there in two weeks, the White House pushed the GOP House leaders to bring the amnesty up outside normal channels. To do that, you have to put an item on the suspension (of the rules) calendar. That takes a two-thirds (66.67%) vote.
They were able to muster a 66.75% vote and barely win.
The vote was 275-137. If we had gotten one more vote, we would have won.
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Now, you may feel depressed that we couldn't even get one vote more than a third. But remember that: =========================================================
* Many, many Republicans who voted for this amnesty, privately opposed it. They voted for it because of the heavy arm-twisting by the White House to support the Commander-in-Chief. One Republican who voted for it told us this afternoon, "This is the most hypocritical vote I've cast in 10 years." He cheered us on even as he allowed the White House to handle him like a puppet.
* A decent-sized fraction of the Democrats are not excited about these amnesties. But they have no Democrat who will stand up and really take the lead to give them cover to switch to our side.
* Most Democrats have put little thought into this and just blindly follow Daschle, Gephart and McAuliff as they call for open borders. If they could begin to see their constituents noticing and condemning the open borders, we could have a chance with them.
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More good news in the votes
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Although their numbers were small, the 13 Democrats who stood up against their party's monolithic open borders stance were a significant bunch and far greater than the usual two or three who Democrats don't consider to be Democrats anyway.
We haven't analyzed them, but I will bet you that nearly all are in districts where it is possible for a Republican to win. Democrats who need moderates and independents to stay in office are going to see that they cannot stand for open borders and massive federally forced population growth.
Republicans voted 123-92 against their President, against their House leadership, against their Judiciary Chairman, against the GOP conference office that did a blitz on them this afternoon, against all the GOP handlers who say the only way the GOP can survive is to pander to illegality.
That vote is an incredible rebuke of party leadership.
Hastert, Delay, Blunt, etc. know that they can only anger the majority of their party for so long before they will no longer be the leaders. They will bear a great deal of resentment at the White House for putting them into this mess -- which they resisted until they felt they had no choice.
The open borders people in the White House who have announced that they have several more amnesties they want to try may find the going getting tougher.
Who was this, Ron Paul?! I was beginning to think there was at least one man in congress that didn't drink the water, but it looks like he's just like the rest of them after all. Once bitten twice shy--I guess his stint at going independent taught him a lesson about bucking the pubbies.
As such, when someone shows up out of the blue, and makes emotive appeals based on the plights of the "poor persecuted unfortunate immigrants" the logical assumption is going to be that the person in question is making a backhanded slap at those opposed to immigration (not unlike the backhanded slap at conservatives every time Bush talks about "compassionate conservatism"). I am sure you did not intend this consciously, and text-based communication forums like this are notorious for misunderstandings; you may not consciously have intended to condescend or imply racism/bigotry, but you should understand why others might assume otherwise.
I will make my point clearer: if you are going to continue to make emotional appeals based solely on the needs of immigrants as the immigrants and their spokesmen define it, rather than hard-headed decisions based on the realities of what is best for the national interest, then you are engaging in the kind of soft, emotive politics which have been poisoning and destroying the West for these past 50 years or more. If you don't like my calling this kind of "thinking" feminine, then, fine, call it something else. But recognize the thing for what it is, whatever you chose to call it.
The future of what is left of Western Civilization depends upon clear thinking and hard choices, not hand-wringing and barely suppressed fears of transgressing against social taboos.
I don't class myself as elite. Not at all. In fact I class myself as reasonably practical. In fact, if I dare, to put it in American political terms, I'm most possibly Reaganesque. (So friggin' sue me!).
My alarm bells go off whenever I hear "Reaganesque". During the 80's the conservative movement and the GOP were highjacked and taken over by neo-cons flying under the false flag of Reaganism. It is these people who have turned the GOP into what it is, on the all important issues of immigration, especially.
Now, you may be as conservative as you say, but if you chose the wrong side on immigration, all of that carefully marshalled conservatism will be meaningless, because before long you will have nothing left to conserve, as millions of native Americans have discovered in recent years, as they were driven out of their native lands or reduced to a tiny and despised minority.
As to elites...you misunderstand me. You don't have to be part of an elite to be subtly controlled and manipulated by elite values, and to thereby be a purveyor and enforcer of elite-inspired and elite-created social taboos (indeed, part of being a true member of the elite is the freedom to disregard the propaganda bilge about diversity and tolerance which you force your social lessers to adhere to in public).
The primary motive driving adherence to elite values by non-elites is status anxiety; this is the fear of being seen as declasse, and there is nothing that will get one labeled a rube and a lower class person faster than being seen as transgressing elite values on immigration, race, globalism, and related issues. Indeed, the more one sees one's self as a "practical" and a "reasonable" person, the more one is likely to be open to status anxiety and manipulation by elite values, if being "reasonably practical" in fact means acceptance of de facto situations and accepted values, without reference to first principles or long-term goals, independent of what others may think about these.
I have never found a bigger flock of those suffering from status anxiety and herd mentality than amongst journalists. I hope you are an exception to this, but I stand by my generalization. Journalists on the whole are not an elite, but they are the effective and informal enforcers of the social taboos of political correctness, and their reality-distorting coverage of the news is the primary function of journalists in modern, media-saturated Western societies. As such they are one of the primary tools of elites in their effort to mold public opinion and thereby make democracy a hollow word.
You might want to investigate further for your own benefit the realities of immigration, both in the USA and in Europe. Mass immigration is brand-new in Ireland, and as such many people in Ireland are in the same stage of denial which the USA and the rest of Europe was at a few decades ago. You simply cannot trust mainstream journalist coverage on this issue, as on many others: the lies, evasions, suppressions, and distortions perpetuated by journalists in the media are massive and only fully realized by those who have first hand experience of the facts on the ground. You literally have to read modern news coverage like you would read an old issue of the communist Pravda: between the lines, and in code. Realization of these facts takes time and effort, and cannot take place at all if one is subconsciously driven by fears of social taboos or emotive sob stories generated to deflect hard questions about the public issues that really matter.
You and all your chicken little friends should go read this...
Truth hurts
All your efforts to hurt Bush and the Repubs are pathetic.
Go back to DU, shills.
Words and pep talks don't mean a thing now. I'm done being "managed" or handled.
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